Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday September 06, 2010 @08:20PM
from the water-is-wet-film-at-eleven dept.

GovTechGuy writes "On Friday we discussed news that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott opened a probe into whether Google ranks its search listings with an eye toward nicking the competition. Google suggested the concerns have a major sponsor: Microsoft. In question is whether the world's biggest search engine could be unfairly disadvantaging some companies by giving them a low ranking in free search listings and in paid ads that appear at the top of the page. That could make it tough for users to find those sites and might violate antitrust laws. Abbott's office asked for information about three companies who have publicly complained about Google, according to blog post by Don Harrison, the company's deputy general counsel. Harrison linked each of the companies to Microsoft."

This seems to be a trend with all my bing searches, the strictly correct but irrelevant answer first, then somewhere down the page what I actually asked for, whereas google tends to give the the relevant answer first more often than not....

This is probably just the way I look for things... your experience may vary....

Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate. I guess Bing didn't crush Google quite as firmly as Microsoft hoped so they had to find proxies to launch baseless legal attacks until they think of something else. The technology landscape would be vastly improved if Microsoft would just dissolve and go away.

Truth, my insightful friend. Google isn't the typical MicroSoft victim. They have their own huge army of lawyers and deep pockets. It make you wonder what MS's real goals are here. Is it just to spread FUD and hassle Google like they tried with SCO against IBM? Something even more nefarious. It ought to be interesting, eh?

C) No phone lock-in, Android is by far the most open of the popular Smartphone OSes beating both Windows Mobile and iOS.

The only thing Google should possibly get an Anti-trust suit is with Google Book Search but that is mostly because of how fucked-up the copyright situation is in the US and not because Google is trying to be evil.

Being good at something so people use your site is not a monopoly, it is competition.

I'm not arguing in favor of this investigation and don't believe the allegations, but you're wrong about the monopoly thing. A monopoly doesn't have to be complete, nor does there have to be a lock-in in order to fall afoul of anti-trust law. Standard Oil was not the only oil company, and had minor players. People were always free to buy from them. Windows was not the only operating system, you could always use Linux or buy a Mac.

Standard Oil used its dominant position to stifle its competition. Microsoft used its dominant market share in Windows to snuff out Netscape. I don't think anyone can doubt that Google could decimate a web-based business by demoting them in search rankings.

It is exceedingly rare to find a true, 100%, monopoly. It is just difficult to control any field to that extent. People need to remember Microsoft never had 100% control. Back during the MS anti-trust days, Apple was still in business, and their ONLY market at the time was computers. 100% of their products were systems that didn't run Windows. That right there is proof MS didn't have 100% control. To have that, Apple would have had to sell no computers. Also while it wasn't popular, Linux was on the desktop then. Maybe you discount Linux because it was free but you can't discount Apple.

So you can't say MS was a monopoly despite Apple and then in the same breath say but Google can't be a monopoly because there are other search engines.

If we say that monopolies are only cases of 100% control, well then we might as well just stop worrying about anti-trust because that'll almost never be the case. A big company could always find some tiny competitor, maybe who only exists in a single town (and only because the company allows it) and say "See? There's competition, we don't own ALL the market!"

If we accept that it doesn't take 100% control to be a monopoly then you can't cry "But there's other search engines so Google CAN'T be a monopoly!" Sorry, but they can. If they are isn't up to us to decide, but they clearly can, despite other engines being out there.

Yes it does, Standard Oil was a monopoly because it was not better than its competition but rather relied on the government to fuel its practices, without the government. Plus, by the time Standard Oil was about to be broken up, competitors had effectively nullified its competitive edge.

With Microsoft, it again used government help in the form of government contracts for computers, plus patents and copyrights with OEM bundling meant that it was a monopoly.

Any comparison between MS's "monopoly" and that of Standard Oil's or AT&T's is remote at best. No specially crafted "market" definition was required for the latter companies to be considered a monopoly like MS's monopoly on "desktop operating systems".

Actually, they can't. It's the quality of the results that makes Google search useful. Such an attack would eliminate the value of Google's product- credibility - and only destroy themselves. They would then be just another Bing. They know this, so this can't happen.

That's assuming they were totally blatant and obvious about it... like it Oracle suddenly disappeared from search results after they filed their suit. But if they really chose to use their search market to, say, dominate the mobile market there are so many subtle ways of doing it. Whenever someone searched for the iPhone, stories about the antenna problems could get higher rankings than their organic ranking would dictate. Stories praising the latest Android-based "iphone-killer" could float a closer to

Standard Oil used its dominant position to stifle its competition. Microsoft used its dominant market share in Windows to snuff out Netscape. I don't think anyone can doubt that Google could decimate a web-based business by demoting them in search rankings.

Assume for the moment that this statement is true (and I would argue that it is not.) Re-read that with the Sesame Street "One of these things is not like the others..." song playing in your head, then tell me why Google deserves to be under investigation again.

Market share was not the sole factor driving Standard Oil's proceedings. From the suit filed (reprinted from the Wikipedia article on Standard Oil):

"Rebates, preferences, and other discriminatory practices in favor of the combination by railroad companies; restraint and monopolization by control of pipe lines, and unfair practices against competing pipe lines; contracts with competitors in restraint of trade; unfair methods of competition, such as local price cutting at the points where necessary to suppress competition; [and] espionage of the business of competitors, the operation of bogus independent companies, and payment of rebates on oil, with the like intent."

Yep, monopolies can be very much defacto situations. I mean technically, there is no barrier for entry to the search market. Just put up a website that does searches, people can use it if they like. No barrier at all...

Except how it really works is that Google has become the one and only place most people go. It is who they trust, who they seek out, etc. What this means is that effectively, there is a nearly insurmountable barrier to entry. You have to make people aware of your site, and convince them to use it. Very hard. Could potentially be harder still since of course people find sites through Google, and Google controls a large amount of online ads. They could black list you quite effectively if they wanted to.

These days, Google really does have control over what people see. If Google knows about it, people know about it. If it doesn't, they don't. That is very much a monopoly position. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but could be abused in many ways, and who knows may be is abused.

I think too many starry-eyed geeks forget that just because Google and Apple don't like MS, doesn't mean that they might not be like MS in many ways. They aren't underdogs anymore, they aren't the little company fighting against the giant. They are both massive, powerful, firms with a lot of control over the markets they are in. That doesn't make them bad or anything, but does mean they deserve the same scrutiny as MS.

I'm not arguing in favor of this investigation and don't believe the allegations, but you're wrong about the monopoly thing. A monopoly doesn't have to be complete, nor does there have to be a lock-in in order to fall afoul of anti-trust law. Standard Oil was not the only oil company, and had minor players. People were always free to buy from them. Windows was not the only operating system, you could always use Linux or buy a Mac.

Standard Oil used its dominant position to stifle its competition. Microsoft u

Standard Oil used its dominant position to stifle its competition. Microsoft used its dominant market share in Windows to snuff out Netscape. I don't think anyone can doubt that Google could decimate a web-based business by demoting them in search rankings.

Yes, Google could do that. The difference is that Standard Oil and Microsoft didn't get in trouble because of what they were capable of doing, they got in trouble because of what they actually did. Now, if anyone manages to prove that Google was doing this (and it's hard to see what the real benefit would be, given the potential liabilities involved.)

Nope, they could for instance be in trouble for buying Double click, that was definitely a violation of antitrust law which the DoJ should never have allowed in the first place. Also if it turns out that there really is special priority given to their apps, that would also be a violation of Sherman. Not to mention that for the longest time there was some degree of ambiguity between when their apps were popping up alongside search results as a recommendation from Google rather than from their algorithm.

The problem is, with virtual things there is no monopoly when there is no lock-in look at Standard Oil, they could nearly monopolize the oil industry because there aren't an infinite number of oil wells. On the other hand whats the overhead for opening up a competitor to Google Ads/Double Click, its effectively zero. A monopoly is bad because it monopolizes a limited resource, with an internet company there is no scarcity! Barring government intervention in the form of software patents, there is no barrier

Exactly. What giggles me most is that compliance here means that people should be able to search for Microsoft things on Google and Google should not put in funny routines and block out Microsoft. You see how funny this is? It's essentially whiny baby.

If people are searching for Microsoft things, or searching other things and expecting Microsoft to show up, ON GOOGLE, it's too damn late for Microsoft.

There is most definitely a monopoly and a huge lock-in. People keep making the mistake you are in thinking that you are googles customers, you are googles product and you are sold to their customers (advertisers), Their product is the users and they sell them for advertising as such they have a massive market share to the point that there is "almost" no choice but to advertise with google or lose access to a significant portion of the internet audience.

Yes, that's absolutely true, but here the original poster was talking about the devices from the consumer perspective, as was I.

but it's not open source, which is a pretty bug plus for Android.

As a developer for mobile devices I haven't really seen that much of a boon from that aspect, other than educationally since I can review source. But again from the consumer side, I've not seen much of a benefit.

Yet, claiming that Android is by far the most open Smartphone OS is just plain false. Ever heard of:OpenMoko [wikipedia.org] Maemo [wikipedia.org] MeeGo [wikipedia.org]
- all of which allow anyone to write apps in any language available, because unlike Android they are mostly using linux' own standard interfaces. In some cases "porting" would simply mean recompiling or even just copying the app over, whereas under Android you'd most certainly have to rewrite it from scratch to conform with Android's requirements and still need to worry about compatib

Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate. I guess Bing didn't crush Google quite as firmly as Microsoft hoped...

I don't know what Microsoft expected with Bing, but I would guess that they are more than pleased with the marketshare they have been able to grab. Some of the things they've had to do to get that marketshare has been quite lame (deals with Verizon, etc), but I would be surprised if Bing's success has not already exceeded their expectations.

MicroSoft would never stoop to such a dirty trick. They have a long history of being open and above board in all business dealings. Just look how well they've treated the open source community over the years.

* Foundem -- the British price comparison site that is backed by ICOMP, an organization funded largely by Microsoft. They claim that Google’s algorithms demote their site because they are a direct competitor to our search engine. The reality is that we don’t discriminate against competitors. Indeed, companies like Amazon, Shopping.com and Expedia typically rank very high in our results because of the quality of the service they offer users. Various experts have taken a closer look at the quality of Foundem’s website, and New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann concluded, “I want Google to be able to rank them poorly.”

* SourceTool/TradeComet - SourceTool is a website run by parent company TradeComet, whose private antitrust lawsuit against Google was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year. The media have noted that TradeComet is represented by longtime Microsoft antitrust attorneys, and independent search experts have called SourceTool a “click arbitrage” site with little original content.

* myTriggers - Another site represented by Microsoft’s antitrust attorneys, myTriggers alleges that they suffered a drop in traffic because Google reduced their ad quality ratings. But recent filings have revealed that the company’s own servers overheated, explaining their reduced traffic.

I just searched for search engines on Bing. Google did not even make the first page. Although a picture of google is shown for what a search engine is. lol. Bing was second on Google when searching for search engines.

I've dealt with Greg Abbott and the rest of the Texas legal system. The Texas court system is so obviously "Justice for those who can pay for it" and Greg Abbott personally only responds to things that will give him good PR or more money flowing to him that I'm surprised there hasn't been a probe. Google is the financial jackpot.

This is a non-issue. People use google.com's website of their own volition. The search results come from Google's database, there is no hindering of businesses or anti-trust issue here at all since all of the information gleaned on the internet is already present. Google merely presents it how they deem necessary to match the search keywords.

This is a non-issue. People use google.com's website of their own volition.

That has little or nothing to do with it. If Google is ruled to have sufficient market share for selling advertising based on search, then that gives Google a lot of power, including power to distort other markets. The law says, if they do have that power, it's illegal for them to use it to gain, including by harming competitors in other markets. Legally speaking Google cannot rank search results any way they please. They can do it according to impartial rules, but if they have large enough share, they cannot rank certain companies lower as way to gain in other markets.

I seriously doubt, it is the case tat Google is breaking the law here. Likely this is just empty legal harassment, but hopefully the courts will determine that.

Why does Google have marketshare? It has marketshare simply because it is the best. When you get marketshare not from locking-in consumers, not by taking government money, not by getting special legal protection, Google should be able to do whatever they want because customers can switch pretty easily.

It doesn't hurt consumers if Google messes with their search results because of these things. If enough people don't want them to, guess what? People will switch, just like

It doesn't matter whether or not they're the best, if they have the market share they are prohibited by law from using it to harm the competition. End of story. Additionally, they got to be that large in part by being allowed to violate Clayton and take on the ad space that belonged to Double click, that was a very clear violation of antitrust regulation. You don't just get to be the biggest or the best search engine without spending a lot of money on it, the search engine is paid for via ad revenue.

The problem is that makes no sense. Pre-digital laws when applied in the digital world make no fucking sense and to apply them is stupidity.

Monopolies are bad in the physical world because they take limited resources and monopolize them. There are only so many oil wells in the world, there are only so much (clean) water in the world, etc. when a single company takes control of them they can charge through the roof and make everyone else pay. But this isn't like that.

Barring government intervention in the form of software patents, there are no limited resources when it comes to ads on the web, and barring lock-in with physical things or a -huge- company taking all available IP addresses/bandwidth or something, a monopoly can't exist that harms consumers.

The idea that any company can monopolize infinite resources is laughable. Don't like Google? Use one of their thousands of competitors. Don't like DoubleClick, advertise elsewhere.

The internet allows for unlimited resources, you can't monopolize infinity. Just because the law says something doesn't mean its right, correct and not fucking stupid.

Irrelevant. It's like asking why Tom has a rifle. Maybe he uses it for hunting. Maybe he's a cop. It doesn't matter. When you have power, you're prohibited from using that power in ways that harm society. Mike doesn't own a rifle and he can aim his hands at people and squeeze with his finger all he wants. When he buys and is holding a gun, the law sees it differently. It's not illegal to gain a monopoly (in general) just as it's not illegal to obtain a rifle (in general). But you are certainly prohibited fr

Try finding three major tech companies that aren't linked with Microsoft in some way.

And when the link is "the lawyers hired by TradeComet include some of the same lawyers Microsoft hired to do similar work in the past" and you're getting pretty close to playing "six degrees of Kevin Bacon".

If there's a smoking gun somewhere, this ain't it. If this is the best Google's general counsel can do, maybe there isn't a smoking gun anywhere.

Gotta agree with you on this, even Apple is more closely related to Microsoft than that.:) But this is slashdot where flaming microsoft is an instinctual activity for many people no matter how (in)accurate it may be.

If the supposed link is just the attorneys then that is beyond stupid. It has to be something more than that.

You have to remember that for major issues, companies almost always retain outside council. There are a few reasons for this:

1) In house council often has little to no courtroom experience. Their job is mainly to advise you, look over contracts, that kind of thing. Fine, but that is real different form the skills needed in a courtroom. So when something is going to court, you retain a firm that regul

The lesson they took away from the antitrust trial was "Antitrust is a way for competitors to use the government to interfere with your business." not "We were being evil and wrong and got into trouble for it.". The wrong lesson. They got off way too lightly and too many people were sympathetic.

Since they took that lesson away, now they think they can do the same thing to Google. They might be right, but I hope not. Though if their allegation has merit (which I strongly suspect it doesn't) I will stop trusting Google and be pretty angry at them.

The following two aspects of Bing are superior:
Its ability to find porn in the video search is better than Google.
The way the roads are drawn on maps are a bit easier to read than Google (but Yahoo is better still).

Honorable mention: the new version of Google Images brings it almost down to Bing's level.

Does anyone else use use Google to search for something thats on a MS website? I mean, their search on their own site is so horrible in finding what I'm looking for that I use google. I can't be the only person that does this.

Does anyone else use use Google to search for something thats on a MS website? I mean, their search on their own site is so horrible in finding what I'm looking for that I use google. I can't be the only person that does this.

Search 'search engines' on Bing. Google doesn't even make the first page. Although it's picture is used to define what a search engine is. lol Yeah that's an unbiased search. Search the same on Google and Bing is listed second.

I was curious, so I compared searching for "open office" on Bing and Google. Google returns a list of sites that would be pretty much what anyone would expect, lots of links to openoffice.org sites, and some other related sites that all seem reputable. Bing is somewhat similar, except for one glaring exception. The third link (and for some reason, my eye was drawn to it, probably because the title was simply "OpenOffice") is to http://openoffice.org-suite.com/ [org-suite.com]. Note that this is NOT a site associated wi

MS is just upset that when they used the desktop monopoly to gain an advantage in search by making Bing the default search engine in IE it didn't work so now they're just going to try and use the courts to give their shitty search an advantage.

I note with interest that Google seems to have developed a template defense when it's caught out.

It always seems to ignore the actual issue and instead starts pointing fingers at others for "being behind it". With China it was the Chinese government (ignoring that Apple has managed to keep secrets for years in the same country), with Streetview it was the respective governments instead of Google quite simply breaking the law, and now this.

But Google's search algorithm is published -- there's even a helpful book about it, Amy Langville's "PageRank and beyond" which demonstrates that it's no more complicated than the linear algebra you learned in your sophomore year of engineering school.

The basic idea behind PageRank may be published, but there is a lot more to do with it, such as all the logic for detecting link farms and other forms of intentional manipulation, which Google does not make public.

There is also a ton of logic behind trying to determine in a page what is "important," and that comes down to parsing html and making inferences as to what is the "main part", what is a heading, and so on. And then there is logic for determining what is duplicate content....again a very complex problem. The list goes on. If you think this is simple or straightforward, I'd say you are highly mistaken.

Even more obvious is the fact that Google doesn't have a monopoly on search engines. Obviously, Microsoft has a search engine of their own, which they have invested a lot of money into.
Don't like Google, for any reason? Just use another engine: http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ [thesearchenginelist.com] There is little reason for you to believe that list is truly "comprehensive", either. What does China have? Badu? It's not on that list. Seems ALL those search engines are English language, North American engines, so if you are fluent in some other language, you probably have even MORE choices.
The fact that Google is the best for MY needs shouldn't influence people who dislike or distrust Google. They are NOT the only game in town.
For Google to violate anti-trust and/or anti-monopoly laws, I believe that it must be established that they ARE a monopoly. I just can't see that.
Of course, we are all aware that trials and judges can be bought, I think. Witness all the patent trolls, as well as actions brought by RIAA, MPAA, and others.

In order for antitrust laws to take effect a company does not need to be a monopoly. It needs to have significant market power. The definition depends on regulator and leeway depends on regulator as well.

For example regulators in the EU (except UK) and USA allow natural monopolies based around inventions and in new markets. If you invent something new and you use it to create a market or enter an existing market most regulators (except UK) will allow you to grow your company until you have SMP and sometimes even to a full monopoly provided that you stay within your market. However, if you try to leverage this monopoly to enter a new market you will get whacked on short order. Same if you try to leverage it to prevent other players from entering the market you have created.

Coming back to Google. Google has SMP (and is not in the UK) which is achieved by natural growth and this is one of the reasons why it does not get whacked straight away. Google also is clearly leveraging its SMP position in search space to enter other markets - applications, navigation, etc. This is a different story compared to search space. There, the regulators are obliged to investigate it by law. In fact it is surprising that it is under so little scrutiny. This says volumes about their lobbying and legal arm. Actually looking at the list of job ads they dump on linkedin around here and doing some stats on the ratio of lobby, pr, legal vs engineering makes this considerably less surprising. Not surprising at all in fact.

While I don't doubt that you understand the law better than I do - much of the regulation regarding Microsoft only kicked in AFTER it was established that Microsoft held a monopoly. It has repeatedly been argued, right here on slashdot, that if MS had NOT been found to be a monopoly, all sorts of court rulings and regulations would have been handled quite differently.
Back to Google. The fact is, they are NOT a monopoly. There has been no such ruling, either in the US or the EU, that I am aware of. In

It has repeatedly been argued, right here on slashdot, that if MS had NOT been found to be a monopoly

Not quite. Microsoft was not a monopoly, in the strict technical sense. Apple was competing with them, for example, as were a number of other smaller companies. They did, however, have enough market influence that they could act as if they had a monopoly. For example, in a competitive market, if you raise your prices then you lose some customers to the competition. In a monopoly, you just get more income. In Microsoft's case, the network effect meant that they didn't need to completely own the market

"Google has its hand in anti-trust proceedings against Microsoft as well. What goes around comes around."

I think you are ignoring the fact that Microsoft is actually flamingly guilty of such antitrust. What you are saying is equivalent to saying that if someone accuses a person of rape, who actually in fact commited said rape, then it is a case of "fair is fair" if the rapist then accuses you of raping them.

I think it's more along the lines that as long as the companies are legally allowed to throw lawyers and regulators at each other, they will. The whole good for the goose/gander junk. Of course, that doesn't mean it's right or ethical, much less 'good', but it is something that's done. (Some would argue that it's actually a form of underhanded evil corporate activity. IMO Google gave up their mantra a long time ago, but I wouldn't call this type of stuff evil, just scummy.)

Why do people keep saying that? Anyone who knows technology well knows it isn't true. Sure they're a business and they operate for profit, that's a given, but they are a lot more open and non-evil then they have to be - a lot.

They make their own web browser (which is 99% open source), and still support Firefox.

They still support some apps on iPhone even though Apple has been dicks to them.

Rampant cynicism, typical of slashdot. A large company that makes a profit cannot be good. No politician who is part of one of the two parties can ever have a good idea. That type of thing mostly. And maybe a little bit of the "Google signed a deal to kill net neutrality!!!" story that came out a week or two ago followed closely by the "Oh wait, no, that was a false rumor" that was less reported.

Okay true. But in this case, what is being claimed is simply not likely to be true. While I trust google about as far as I can throw it (let it be known and repeated that I distrust ALL marketing/advertising companies) the claims against it are inconsistent with even the most casual observations.

The antitrust claims against Microsoft, on the other hand, were quite valid. And, as it turns out, the remedies against Microsoft were clearly not enough as they haven't yet changed their ways fully. (For example, OEM version of Microsoft Office is mysteriously cheaper when purchased through Dell than when purchased through other sources... perhaps this is "Dell's doing" but then again, to what advantage is it to offer MS Office at a perceived discount? Certainly not the user who doesn't get MS Office and still has to pay a partial price for it as that portion of the cost is rolled into the price of the computer.) And I am sure there are lots more examples of the games they play, but it's close to my bed time and the mind is shutting down.

I'm neither a Google fan nor one of Microsoft. But as someone from the outside, objectively I can't see where the case has merit and it just smells like more of Microsoft's dirty play. After all, this is not the first time we have heard of Microsoft's agenda being pushed by its partners and affiliates.

(For example, OEM version of Microsoft Office is mysteriously cheaper when purchased through Dell than when purchased through other sources... perhaps this is "Dell's doing" but then again, to what advantage is it to offer MS Office at a perceived discount?

FWIW, Dell typically doesn't make any money on the MS software they sell--at least not when to comes to volume licensed software. They sell it as cost, as a means of driving other business (hardware). At least, that's the story I've gotten from my sales

Indeed. As long as Dell continue to offer a wide range of Linux system as well as Microsoft Windows PCs then I cannot see anything suspicious about getting cheap access to Microsoft products. I have not seen their web site for a while, but I cannot see why they wouldn't offer just as many Linux products as Microsoft as the operating system is simply a cost to drive the hardware part of their business.

That is stupid. Antitrust is not about your competitors complaining about you. Antitrust is when you are so economically powerful that you can destroy the free market and create a situation in which you economically destroy anybody who competes with you.

'What goes around comes around.' reveals a mindset in which antitrust is all part of the normal give-and-take of companies competing against each other. It isn't. Somebody has to engage in a specific set of behaviors deemed anticompetitive for it to be considered an antitrust problem. It's a market distortion, and companies accused of it aren't playing by rules in which capitalism can function properly.

It's possible this accusation against Google is true. But I suspect it's just smoke. If it is true, I will consider Google to have done something truly evil and deserving of this investigation. And it will not be a case of 'what goes around comes around'. It will be a case of a company doing something wrong that should be punished severely.

"Antitrust is not about your competitors complaining about you. Antitrust is when you are so economically powerful that you can destroy the free market and create a situation in which you economically destroy anybody who competes with you."

These aren't comparable, in this case Microsoft is backing lawsuits with their own resources, your linked blog post is about their comment on the matter since they now had experience in the the browser market. Google didn't bring fourth any of the antitrust lawsuits or back them up of support them with their resources. And quoted from the blog "Google's perspective will be useful as the European Commission evaluates remedies to improve the user experience" meaning they will give their comment to the EC in a

Really? REALLY? This is insightful? The best 5+ slashdot can offer? A kindergartener's level of understanding of life, where "what goes around comes around?" Oh yeah, that's about right.

There are times when the kindergartner is right. Some things are so simple they get overlooked, not so complex that no one can figure them out. This may or may not be one of those times; that's up to the reader to decide. The point is, that isn't an instantaneous slam-dunk dismissal no matter how badly you want it to be.

ad hominem is not a logical fallacy when used by either google or apple.

Microsoft is not a person.

What they are though, is an organisation that has repeatedly attacked competitors via proxy - Sco, attempting to sell Linux-relevant patents to trolls, stacking ISO to block ODF, etc, etc.

This effort though, seems too minor and too transparently fallacious to be a direct attack on Google. It's more likley they are furthering another agenda - perhaps establishing precedednt for their own actions.

Charging whitebox PC vendors for MS OSes on every box they sell regardless of what OS actually ships on a given PC, so that the whitebox vendors can't afford to preload anyone else's (for example IBM's) OS is kind of an attack by proxy. They were bullying the PC vendors to fight IBM for them.

Can someone please explain this to me? What company or website am I searching for on google.com where searching for them does not bring up their website?

When you search for "Macaroni" what macaroni making company's website is ranked first among the many returned? If Google has overwhelming influence on the search market and they change their rankings so that it is a macaroni making company not owned by a company they compete with in another market, then that's against the law. It seems unlikely that is the case in any market, but hopefully the courts will determine the truth of the matter.

Wow, you really need to go to school or at least read up on the subject. Government antitrust laws are the only reason why we have any free market left. Adam Smith himself was very clear that antitrust regulation was necessary for a free market to exist. In a free market without such regulation you ultimately end up with a single source monopoly over absolutely every item you can buy or sell. It takes a while, but it does eventually happen as it's not in any suppliers interest to have to compete with anybody else. It's usually more profitable to sell out for a hefty fee and a percentage than to see the profits going down the drain as buyers get to haggle.

Hey, don't knock homeschooling. Homeschooling by mothers with phDs works GREAT. It's homeschooling by dumb people we have to watch out for. In this case, I think "homeschool" is used as a codeword for stupid people who also happen to be fundamentalist loonies. If you're saying that stupid people who also happen to be fundamentalist loonies are a bad idea, then I'm in complete agreement. Let's make them illegal.